This piece is the second in a series of reflections on what maximises beauty and life in the home space. Read the series introduction here.
Light has the power to make even the ugliest buildings and objects acceptable – perhaps even admirable. Its effect is enchanting because its force is difficult to explain. What is it, exactly, that gives light such power?
Ordinarily, I despise skyscrapers. I think they are much too presumptuous in height and construction to be sympathetic to the human realm. And yet a certain quality of light, a certain glisten at the right angle can give them the aesthetic charm (I believe) they inherently lack. I suppose this is also the function of photographic filters – to make an otherwise uninspiring image appealing. In this sense, light can be used deceptively. But in combination with an already thoughtfully designed building, or an already beautiful interior, light can create utter magic.
I do not believe ceiling lights are necessary in homes. Especially those without shades. I think they have their place in factories and warehouses and supermarkets – settings I tend to avoid. The exception is a chandelier (more on this in a moment).
In homes, where rooms are human in size, lamps are totally sufficient. And not only are they sufficient, but they lend beauty to the space far more effectively than overhead light fittings. They create pools of light that give the space depth and variability – bringing certain objects into clarity and allowing others to hide, to fade back into partial obscurity. This creates a visual and experiential gradient that keeps our souls at ease.
There is nothing worse for the human soul than a space that is fully or over-exposed, where every object is brought into crisp distinction from all that surrounds it. The soul likes a space it can melt into, where it and the ‘things’ surrounding it feel connected more than they feel distinguished. It is impossible for the borders of an object to be seen as contiguous with – that is, shared with – the borders of other objects if the light leaves nothing unexposed.
There is a reason that the archetypal romantic date night is set by candlelight. Connection is fostered through partial exposure, where the limits of the self can begin to fade into the other. Full exposure individualises, atomises. It sabotages relations and relationships. I’m not advocating its opposite (complete obscurity), but all that spans the middle space: a flexible dual capacity of openness and enclosure, self-sharing and self-keeping.
In this way, unshaded overhead lights feel oppressive. They make everything an ‘object’ and wipe out interrelations. In our home, these lights never get used. During the day, there is usually sufficient daylight spilling into our spaces to render electric lighting unnecessary altogether. In the evening and very early morning, we use lamps and night lights only.
You’ll recall that I opened this series with a reflection on bathrooms. They are often considered worthy of bright, beaming overhead lighting. Perhaps I’ve lived in too many rentals, and it’s the easy solution. But it seems to be a common feature of other bathrooms and toilets I’ve seen. I couldn’t think of anything worse than an overexposed lavatory, a space that is supposed to accommodate privacy and intimacy. The first lamp I set up in our current home was in our bathroom.
The other consideration is that lamps tend to be positioned at the human level, within reach. With the exception of the sun, humans have always, until very recently, dealt with light sources that are at or close to eye level – fires, candles, medieval torches mounted on the walls (not the ceiling), etc.
Those types that were hung from above, like chandeliers, have the effect of lamps because they variegate light through different points – several smaller candles or globes – and allow it to diffuse gently into the space. Chandeliers with crystals take this one step further, as the light catches on the crystal facets and glistens through like sunlight through dewy leaves. Thoughtfully designed shaded overhead lights can achieve something similar.
The point is that there is not just one big, unfiltered beam of light pressing down at you in one direction. The sun does this, sure, but humans do not spend all of their time in direct sunlight, and if they work beneath it during the day, even without the respite of clouds and trees, they surely expect some relief when returning home. This is, after all, about lighting in the home.
It’s not centralised light that I’m critiquing here. One of the most wholesome sources of light historically was deeply centralised: the hearth. The hearth was, traditionally, the physical and spiritual centre of the home; the principal source of light, warmth and nourishment (since it often also doubled as a stove and oven). There’s nothing quite so dense in meaning as the hearth. But critical to the hearth’s power is its interactivity and transcience – so much more than flicking a switch, it demands human input and maintenance; it is finite and its flame, a living flame, never flickers in the same way twice. Fire is affected by its environment, by the quality of the wood that fuels it, by the breeze that courses through it. It is in motion. In return, it also deeply affects its surroundings and creates a vivid, living ambience, difficult to replicate with some wires and a socket and switch. Shadow is as central to its impact as illumination.
I’m sure all who are lucky enough to still have one will agree that a fireplace totally transforms the experience of a home. It’s as though an entirely new layer of ambience, a new level of living, opens up. It is, perhaps, the epitome of what light can offer to a home. For everyone else – me included, in our current home – candles and well-selected, well-positioned lamps are our next best choice. We should aim, it seems, to replicate the qualities of light offered by a living flame. That of course means a warm, sepia-toned globe, not blue light. It also means a shade that creates some motion in the way that it disperses the light it surrounds. Admittedly, I’m still searching for the ideal lamps and shades for our own home, and so the images included throughout this piece are not necessarily the perfect examples.
How, then, does light contribute to the beauty and quality of living in the home? By spreading itself out amongst varied points (i.e. lamps) that create pools and gradations of visibility, enough to navigate the space, enough even to read, but not too much that we feel overexposed and interrogated. These visual gradations accommodate an emotional and spiritual flexibity, a liminality, crucial to our sense of being at home. The soul needs shadow in order to breathe.
Variability, too, should be aimed for. The choice to turn on the proud standing lamp, or the smaller, more discreet table lamp, or a combination of both; the choice to light a candle or, even better, a home fireplace – giving the room, and its inhabitants, a range of moods to choose from, a flexible ambience that bends to our changing needs, to the changing qualities of our conversations and activities.
The room with a single, unshaded overhead light is, in my view, a room incompatible with life.
Revision
After collating my reflections on light, and just before publishing this piece, I decided to revisit James Hillman’s analyses on celing ornamentation in Anima Mundi. I had read them many years ago and suspected, upon re-reading, that some mention of overhead lighting might be made, as part of a broader critique of the demise of ornate ceilings and the psychological correlates of that demise. ‘Some’ turned out to be a gross underestimation. Directed by the index for ‘light, quality of,’ I opened to a page covered in affirmative annotations and excited asterisks – my own. I had completely forgotten that such a resonant understanding of light, so similar to the one I share in this piece, had been articulated so brilliantly by Hillman in the space of a few paragraphs. It is possible that I subconsciously absorbed these reflections, and they’ve found their way out, many years later, in slightly different words and in response to a slightly different set of questions. But I do remember Hillman’s comments being singularly resonant, which means, of course, that I already had ears for them – my experiences had already brought me to similar conclusions.
I recommend reading the entire segment ‘City and Soul’ in Anima Mundi, for further reflection. I will include an excerpt here, which serves also as a summation, more masterfully written, of my reflections above:
‘You all feel the difference when the overhead light is turned off and standing lamps, table lamps, go on. You know the kind of interior that emerges… to change the atmosphere toward intimacy and interiority. Single uniform brightness gives way to shadings of colour, reflection, and the sense of nearness to the light within the reach of the hand – as to a candle or a fireplace.
Overhead lighting belongs originally to large state halls, banquet rooms, exhibitions, factories and markets, where very high ceilings and expansive floor plans demanded flooding of light from above… Now we apply the same overhead lighting in the smallest cubicles with the lowest ceilings. We sit bathed in a merciless, shadowless enlightenment, democratically falling on all alike, straight down – a spotlight like that used to break criminals into confession, a brilliant clarity like for an anatomical dissection… each thing is distinct, isolated from each other thing… In such light what does the soul do with its shadows, where find interiority?’
— James Hillman, The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire, ed. Thomas Moore (London: Routledge, 1990) 110.
Lovely piece! Warm and interesting lighting at all levels, especially eye level and lower, brings so much humanity to a space.
An interesting and thought provoking piece. I had always instinctively known that lamps make a space feel cosier and more welcoming, but I had never stopped to consider why. I find the idea of a lamp in the bathroom to be particularly intriguing! On the topic of light, I also think that a home without an abundance of natural light, for example due to small or poorly positioned windows, lacks beauty and soul.